Ghosts
by epicavatar01
Summary: In which Leo Valdez is having an, understandably, awful day. Jason and Piper decide to help.
1. Chapter 1

Leo Valdez was getting really damn tired of dead people.

Really, he just couldn't get a night off. He had just been going to the stupid market with Jason because they were been running low on supplies on the Argo II. Yeah, maybe it wasn't the wisest choice to go at night, but Percy was practically begging for food.

So now, here he was, lost, in the middle of a forest with Jason 'oh-watch-me-fly-i-am-the-eagle-that-soars' Grace. It wasn't like Jason was bad company or anything, but Leo _had _to fix Buford before he exploded that night, and he's exhausted and cranky.

He huffed in frustration. Mighty capable demigod he was, somehow getting lost in a gods damned forest while looking for the market.

Great. Just wonderful.

"Leo, I think we're almost out! C'mon..." Jason's voice trails off at the end. "Something's wrong... Leo, get ready to fight!"

Leo pulled out breath mints from his tool belt in his exhausted state. Oops. He put the breath mints back in, pulling a hammer out and standing back to back with Jason.

He heard a rustling noise near some bushes and swiveled toward the sound, expecting to see some sort of ugly monster.

Leo did not expect to see his mother. Jason stared uncomprehendingly at the woman, but Leo knew it was definitely his mother. From her dark, curly hair to the overalls that she wore, it was definitely Esperanza Valdez. But, something still seems... off.

"_Mamá_?" he stared for a moment, taking in the appearance of his mother. "_¿Eso es verdad?_"

The ghost stepped forward slowly and gracefully, as if she were a regal queen. Leo took in the fact that she looked more solid than a ghost would before everything went wrong, and the shade slapped him in the face.

Leo stumbled back, disoriented and clutching his reddening cheek. "Mom...?"

"You are not my son. You are a devil, a _diablo_, just as my sister said. _You killed me." _the woman hissed through clenched teeth.

His shoulders slumped and he started to feel nauseous. "No, no no, Mom, th-that wasn't my fault. I-it was Gaea. She triggered it. It wasn't me. It wasn't."

"It _was _you, though. You started the fire. I burned to death in that workshop, and it collapsed on me. You are really going to blame Gaea for something you did? I thought I raised you better than that." she spat at him. "You make me _sick._"

Leo started shaking, his chest feeling tight. It was hard to breathe, because he had been trying to get over the blame for years, and now his mother was telling him this. It was all too real, and he found himself hoping it was only a nightmare because this was awful and _why __did__ it hurt so bad?_

"_Lo siento, m__amá," _ he said weakly. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

"You're _sorry_?!" she slapped him in the face again and he briefly wondered why Jason hadn't come to help.

In his muddled mind he also thought that if he could be slapped by her, she wasn't a ghost, but before he could figure anything out Jason yanked him away from his mother.

He never thought he'd be relieved about being separated from her again. "Leo, that's not your mother. I swear what she's telling you isn't true. That's Melinoe, she worked with the Titans in the last war, and she's working with Gaea now. She's tricking you!"

Suddenly, everything snapped into place. The ghost lady from the underworld. Percy, Thalia, and Nico had met her once.

He still couldn't breathe, though and his heart was pounding and why was his face wet? When the realization hit that this wasn't his mother, the woman morphed into a hideous creature with pitch black skin on one side and paper white skin on the other. Beginning to recover from his shock, he realized that there were other monsters around him.

He moved to pick up his hammer, but a force slammed into him from behind. He slammed into something hard and pain rocketed up his arm, completely excruciating. Leo screamed and blacked out.


	2. Chapter 2

Jason knows he's screwed when Leo starts speaking in Spanish.

He had managed to dispel the rest of the monsters, and Melinoe retreated, (pity; he had wanted to smack her the most. Nobody messes with his friends and gets away with it) but Leo had been left unconscious, slumped at the base of a tree. His arm was twisted and bent at an unnatural angle, and part of the bone was _sticking out. _

Yeah, no wonder Leo had screamed as loud as humanly possible when it happened. That would _hurt. _

He had managed to get Leo to wake up, but now he was yelling out in Spanish. Jason had no idea how to speak Spanish, but he knew that Leo was not saying kind words. Jason sighed. Stupid Percy and his stupid stomach.

He needed to get back to the ship and get Leo some help. He sighed. Things were never easy in the life of a demigod, were they?

"Okay, Leo, I'm going to pick you up, and it's probably gonna hurt, but please refrain from punching me in the face." He bent down and scooped Leo up, making sure to be careful of his arm. Leo screamed again, as his bad arm was jostled anyway.

"_Por favor, dejen, por favor, haz que se detenga, me bajó, por favor me soltó!_"

Jason winced at the tone of his friends voice. It was painful to listen to, and it sounded like Leo was pleading. Ouch. He took off into the air, hoping to get to the ship as fast as possible.

Jason really loved the feeling of flying, but he couldn't pay much attention to that at the moment. Leo was squirming around and whimpering, and _gods _it hurt to watch. So he set his gaze forward again and tried to block out the sounds.

After what felt like hours, the Greek trireme came into view. Jason landed as soon as he was close enough. "Guys! Hey, I need some help out here!" he called out from the deck of the ship. He knew that the other crew members were probably fast asleep at this point, so he kept calling loudly. "Piper! Hazel! Come _on _guys, wake up!"

Soon enough, he heard a groan and footsteps shuffling up toward the deck. "Wh-wha? Jason?"

Standing a few feet away was Piper, sleep-mussed, but still as gorgeous as ever. Wait, stop. _Priorities, _Jason.

Piper then noticed the whimpering mess in Jason's arms. "Oh..." her face drained of color. "Oh, _gods, _his arm. He's bleeding. Oh, gods, Jason, what _happened?_"

"Long story, Pipes. I'll let you know later. I just need some help with, um, fixing it." Jason looked at Piper, and she nodded in affirmation.

"Okay," she took a shaky breath in, still eying Leo's arm. "Okay. Let's get him down to the infirmary."

Jason nodded, and started carrying Leo down to the infirmary, Piper alongside him, whispering soothing condolences to the other boy. They laid him down in one of the white beds gently.

Piper whispered, "Jason, what do we do? It's not like we can shove ambrosia down his throat or anything. His arm would heal wrong,"

Jason swallowed hard. Leo had calmed down slightly since they had laid him down, but if they tried to set his arm, he would probably accidentally burn them.

"We're going to have to set it," he said grimly, formulating a plan. "Piper, can you go wake Frank up? We need somebody to hold him down. Wait, no," He shook his head. "Leo'll probably light himself on fire, and Frank's touchy about that. Annabeth has that fireproof lotion stuff, right? Can you go get her?"

Piper seemed to freeze up at the words 'hold him down'. "Okay. I'll go get h-her." Piper strode quickly out of the room, and Jason was left alone with a half-conscious boy.

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. They all had the worst luck, didn't they? Jason had heard what Melinoe had said to Leo while pretending to be his mother, and none of it had been good. He hoped that it hadn't affected his friend too badly.

They sat in almost-silence, apart from the occasional whimper from the injured pyro, until Piper and Annabeth burst through the doors. "What's wrong? I brought the lotion stuff, but Piper was panicking and..." she noticed Leo and blanched, turning white as a sheet. "Oh. What happened?"

Jason sighed, getting close to his limit. "That's not important right now," he snapped "Just please hold him down while I set his arm. And put that lotion on so you don't get burned. And Piper, charmspeak him to calm him down while I do this."

Jason steeled himself and turned toward Leo. He was still clutching at his arm and whimpering, though it wasn't as bad as before.

Annabeth pushed down on his shoulders. Leo started to panic and smoke slightly, but then Piper started speaking in soothing tones.

Jason forced his attention to Leo's arm, bracing his hands against it. Leo yelped loudly, attempting to arch his back under Annabeth's strong grip.

"Okay, Leo," He spoke to his friend like he would speak to a scared, small animal. "I'm going to fix this, and it's going to hurt for a while, but you have to trust me, okay?" Gods, he hated this. It felt like he was humiliating his best friend and he felt awful, but it had to be done.

He snapped Leo's arm back into place.

Leo screamed, and they would've completely lost control over him if it hadn't been for Annabeth, who was still holding him down when he burst into flames. Recovering from her initial shock, she charmspeaked more frantically, trying to get Leo to calm down. "Leo, please, it's alright, you're okay..."

Jason realized that he himself had forgotten to put the sunscreen on. He had burns on his hands from Leo's fire. Oh, well. They didn't really hurt, anyways.

After a few minutes, the flames sputtered and died out, leaving a half burnt bed and an either unconscious or sleeping 15-year-old boy.

Jason sighed in relief. At least _that _was over. "Sorry about that, guys. You can go now if you want." Annabeth stood up and left, leaving Piper and Jason alone.

"We'll just give him the ambrosia when he wakes up. I'm really not in the mood to be force-feeding anyone." Jason chuckled humorlessly.

Piper nodded absentmindedly. "Do you want to tell me what happened now?"

He really didn't want to. He thought that Leo should be the one to tell, only if he was up to it. So he gave Piper the basic story. "We ran into some monsters. One of them knew some bad stuff about Leo's past, I guess. It got him distracted and he got thrown into a tree. I flew us back, and now here we are."

Piper stared at Leo sadly. "It sucks."

"What?"

Piper looked up at him with sad kaleidoscopic eyes. "He's been through a lot, Jason. I'm starting to remember some of what actually happened at the Wilderness School. He told me about a lot of stuff."

"Like what?" Jason asked.

"Well, the basic stuff we already know about, of course. He was cast out by the rest of his family. They thought he killed his mother. He was _eight years old. _He went to six foster homes, and ran from every single one. That's all I remember him telling me, but it's _unbelievable."_

Jason felt sick to his stomach. Maybe he _didn't _know a lot about his best friend.

**Alright, guys! Second chapter, woohoo! Full of angst. I think I'm a sadist. XD. But, yeah. So this is gonna be a threeshot. The next chapter will be from Piper's POV. I hope you enjoyed it, and review if you want to! Thank you for reading!**

**~Shelly**


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